The idea was to establish Idaho’s schools as a high-tech vanguard.
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Idaho Teachers Fight a Reliance on Computers - NYTimes.com - 8 views
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To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators.
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And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.
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OK, several comments here. 1. I have no problem with "less a lecturer." However, I do not advocate the elimination of lecture. It is one of many methods for teacher and learning. 2. The implication of the last part of the sentence is that the computer is becoming the/a teacher, delivering instruction. I do not agree with this characterization of technology. It is a tool for helping students learn, not for teaching them (with some exceptions). It extends the learners access to knowledge and skills...
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And some say they are opposed to shifting money to online classes and other teaching methods whose benefits remain unproved.
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My question here is, "Why are the requiring online classes?" If it is part of the "high-tech vangard" thing, then I don't really understand. If it is because they believe that it is more effective for learning, well, that's a complex issue that depends on so many things that have NOTHING to do with the state's legislature. If it is because students will be taking online courses in their future, and then need to learn to take online courses while in high school, then I can support that. I do not believe that it is appropriate to compare online courses to face-to-face courses. Fact is, sometime online is the only way you can access the knowledge/skills that you need. We need to be comfortable with that. But it has little to do with technology. It's learning!
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improve student learning.
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This is a phrase that irks me. I think that we should be using contemporary information and communication technologies for teaching and learning, because our prevailing information environment is networked, digital, and info-abundant. We should be using tech to make learning more relevant to our time...
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“I fought for my country,” she said. “Now I’m fighting for my kids.” Gov. C. L. Otter, known as Butch, and Tom Luna, the schools superintendent, who have championed the plan, said teachers had been misled by their union into believing the changes were a step toward replacing them with computers. Mr. Luna said the teachers’ anger was intensified by other legislation, also passed last spring, that eliminated protections for teachers with seniority and replaced it with a pay-for-performance system. Some teachers have also expressed concern that teaching positions could be eliminated and their raises reduced to help offset the cost of the technology. Mr. Luna acknowledged that many teachers in the state were conservative Republicans like him — making Idaho’s politics less black and white than in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey, where union-backed teachers have been at odds with politicians.
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The teacher does become the guide and the coach and the educator in the room helping students to move at their own pace.
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This is so far off the mark that I do not know where to begin. OK, here's what I would say. "Our children live in a time of rapid change. Therefore, they must become resourceful and relentless learners. Being a teacher in such classrooms requires an expanding array of skills and activities, among them, being resourceful and relentless learners in front of their students -- adapting to today's prevailing information environment and the information and communication technologies that work it." Probably need to find a simpler way to express this.
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The plan requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits
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Mr. Luna said this would allow students to take subjects that were not otherwise available at their schools and familiarize them with learning online, something he said was increasingly common in college
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becomes the textbook for every class, the research device, the advanced math calculator, the word processor and the portal to a world of information.
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Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning. Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake.
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That is a concern shared by Ms. Rosenbaum, who teaches at Post Falls High School in this town in northern Idaho, near Coeur d’Alene. Rather than relying on technology, she seeks to engage students with questions — the Socratic method — as she did recently as she was taking her sophomore English class through “The Book Thief,” a novel about a family in Germany that hides a Jewish girl during World War II.
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This is a wonderful method for teaching and timeless. However, if the students are also backchanneling the conversation, then more of them are participating, sharing, agreeing and disagreeing, and the conversation has to potential to extend beyond the sounding of the bell. I'm not saying, this is a way of integrating technology, I'm saying that networked collaboration is a relevant way for students to be learning and will continue to learn after school is over.
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Her room mostly lacks high-tech amenities. Homework assignments are handwritten on whiteboards. Students write journal entries in spiral notebooks. On the walls are two American flags and posters paying tribute to the Marines, and on the ceiling a panel painted by a student thanks Ms. Rosenbaum for her service
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Ms. Rosenbaum did use a computer and projector to show a YouTube video of the devastation caused by bombing in World War II. She said that while technology had a role to play, her method of teaching was timeless. “I’m teaching them to think deeply, to think. A computer can’t do that.”
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She is taking some classes online as she works toward her master’s degree, and said they left her uninspired and less informed than in-person classes.
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The group will also organize training for teachers. Ms. Cook said she did worry about how teachers would be trained when some already work long hours and take second jobs to make ends meet
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For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students’ hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most.
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“There may be a lot of misinformation,” he said, “but that information, whether right or wrong, will generate critical thinking for them as they find the truth.”
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If she only has an abacus in her classroom, she’s missing the boat.
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Last year at Post Falls High School, 600 students — about half of the school — staged a lunchtime walkout to protest the new rules. Some carried signs that read: “We need teachers, not computers.” Having a new laptop “is not my favorite idea,” said Sam Hunts, a sophomore in Ms. Rosenbaum’s English class who has a blond mohawk. “I’d rather learn from a teacher.”
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ALPHAILA » Blog Archive » Fast Food - Ads vs. Reality - 21 views
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The difference between advertised fast foods and what they really look like when bought. Photoshoot conducted by a professional, and images of actual food purchased are compared to the idealized version from advertisements. Great study for marketing and photography students.
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Wow! That's an amazing representation of what I've always noticed, but never captured on film. This site would be a great addition to a unit on advertising and persuasion. I did such a unit in the past with really terrific results; see http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/2010/05/as-seen-on-tv-media-messages-unmasked.html for some ideas I incorporated.
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That's exactly what I was thinking too Keith; using the site in a lesson, or unit, about advertising, and how manipulative it can be. There's another site with images here, although it doesn't have any of the contemplative thoughts of the original bookmark (http://www.thewvsr.com/adsvsreality.htm).
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Top 10 Edtech News etc thingers of 2008 « Dave's Educational Blog - 0 views
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World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others | Edutopia - 0 views
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We must also expand our ability to think critically about the deluge of information now being produced by millions of amateur authors without traditional editors and researchers as gatekeepers. In fact, we need to rely on trusted members of our personal networks to help sift through the sea of stuff, locating and sharing with us the most relevant, interesting, useful bits. And we have to work together to organize it all, as long-held taxonomies of knowledge give way to a highly personalized information environment.
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What Will suggests here is rising complexity, but for this to succeed we don't need to fight our genetic heritage. Put yourself on the Serengeti plains, a hunter-gatherer searching for food. You are thinking critically about a deluge of data coming through your senses (modern folk discount this idea, but any time in jobs that require observation in the 'wild' (farming comes to mind) will disabuse you rather quickly that the natural world is providing a clear channel.) You are not only relying upon your own 'amateur' abilities but those of your family and extended family to filter the noise of the world to get to the signal. This tribe is the original collaborative model and if we do not try to push too hard against this still controlling 'mean gene' then we will as a matter of course become a nation of collaborative learning tribes.
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Collaboration in these times requires our students to be able to seek out and connect with learning partners, in the process perhaps navigating cultures, time zones, and technologies. It requires that they have a vetting process for those they come into contact with: Who is this person? What are her passions? What are her credentials? What can I learn from her?
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Aye, aye, captain. This is the classic problem of identity and authenticity. Can I trust this person on all the levels that are important for this particular collaboration? A hidden assumption here is that students have a passion themselves to learn something from these learning partners. What will be doing in this collaboration nation to value the ebb and flow of these learners' interests? How will we handle the idiosyncratic needs of the child who one moment wants to be J.K.Rowling and the next Madonna. Or both? What are the unintended consequences of creating an truly collaborative nation? Do we know? Would this be a 'worse' world for the corporations who seek our dollars and our workers? Probably. It might subvert the corporation while at the same moment create a new body of corporate cooperation. Isn't it pretty to think so.
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technical know-how is not enough. We must also be adept at negotiating, planning, and nurturing the conversation with others we may know little about -- not to mention maintaining a healthy balance between our face-to-face and virtual lives (another dance for which kids sorely need coaching).
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All of these skills are technical know how. We differentiate between hard and soft skills when we should be showing how they are all of a piece. I am so far from being an adequate coach on all of these matters it appalls me. I feel like the teacher who is one day ahead of his students and fears any question that skips ahead to chapters I have not read yet.
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The Collaboration Age comes with challenges that often cause concern and fear. How do we manage our digital footprints, or our identities, in a world where we are a Google search away from both partners and predators? What are the ethics of co-creation when the nuances of copyright and intellectual property become grayer each day? When connecting and publishing are so easy, and so much of what we see is amateurish and inane, how do we ensure that what we create with others is of high quality?
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Partners and predators? OK, let's not in any way go down this road. This is the road our mainstream media has trod to our great disadvantage as citizens. These are not co-equal. Human brains are not naturally probablistic computer. We read about a single instance of internet predation and we equate it with all the instances of non-predation. We all have zero tolerance policies against guns in the school, yet our chances of being injured by those guns are fewer than a lightning strike. We cannot ever have this collaborative universe if we insist on a zero probability of predation. That is why, for good and ill, schools will never cross that frontier. It is in our genes. "Better safe than sorry" vs. "Risks may be our safeties in disguise."
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Students are growing networks without us, writing Harry Potter narratives together at FanFiction.net, or trading skateboarding videos on YouTube. At school, we disconnect them not only from the technology but also from their passion and those who share it.
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The complexities of editing information online cannot be sequestered and taught in a six-week unit. This has to be the way we do our work each day.
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The process of collaboration begins with our willingness to share our work and our passions publicly -- a frontier that traditional schools have rarely crossed.
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Look no further than Wikipedia to see the potential; say what you will of its veracity, no one can deny that it represents the incredible potential of working with others online for a common purpose.
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Anyone with a passion for something can connect to others with that same passion -- and begin to co-create and colearn the same way many of our students already do.
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I believe that is what educators must do now. We must engage with these new technologies and their potential to expand our own understanding and methods in this vastly different landscape. We must know for ourselves how to create, grow, and navigate these collaborative spaces in safe, effective, and ethical ways. And we must be able to model those shifts for our students and counsel them effectively when they run across problems with these tools.
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Next Generation User Skills - 1 views
blog.core-ed.net/...xt-generation-user-skills.html
school2.0 digitalnatives 21st century skills digitalcitizenship
shared by Maggie Verster on 17 Feb 09
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Amid the rhetoric about the validity of concepts such as Digital Natives, GenY, Net Gen etc. an important issue is often overlooked - the need to address the development of skills and competencies required to work, learn and live online in the future. Too often this debate polarises people and disintegrates into arguments over skills vs integration etc.
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7 Reasons Diigo Tastes Better Than Delicious | MakeUseOf.com - 0 views
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Listening to the Audience (Twitter) at Web 2.0 Expo: The Balance of Value vs Entertainment - 0 views
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so I acknowledged them in twitter, and let everyone know we would quickly shift to questions, so the audience could drive the agenda. We received over a dozen questions, and I hope the audience was satisfied, lots of good hard questions from many folks on the ground that are trying to solve these problems: getting management to agree, measuring roi, dealing with detractors, etc. After which, I think we won him over: “Questions made the panel: Love hearing viewpoints from people with boots on the ground”
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This is the point, the audience (students) want the session to be relevant. They wan tto be part of it. That is WHY you should establish a backchannel. Then, the moderator of the panel should monitor the backchannel. I use a backchannel room on Chatzy. Jeremiah just used twitter. However, I agree that BACKCHANNELING is an essential best practice to a good presentation AND having a backchannel moderator. I would add that I like to also have "google jockey" dropping in links as well!
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Now, the next panel (Greg Narain, Brian Solis, Stowe Boyd) wasn’t traditional by any sense, it was an experiment, where we crowd-sourced the agenda to the audience –they used Twitter. Greg Narain setup an application where members from the audience could message (@micromedia2) and their tweets (comments, questions, requests, answers, and sometimes jokes made at Scoble’s expense) were seen live on the screen.
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he was waiting for that breakthrough insight.
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This is an important point -- it is not just about being entertained -- people want MEAT and breakthroughs as well, especially if you're one of "those" people with a reputation for break through statements. Don't let backchannels become distracting -- keep focus and let them add to the presentation.
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Later, I talked to the gentleman who thought the session was negative, and his reason was because he was left out, and didn’t know how to get twitter started.
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I think our culture is being overrun by big mouths & squeaky wheels. Not everyone wants to jump into the mosh pit or finds it boring to have useful information presented in a structured format.
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From the Annointed Few to the Collective Many - 0 views
www.learningcircuits.org/0408_wilkins.html
brightideas connectingpeople govt_business hz08 hzmeta usercontent virtualcollab
shared by Vicki Davis on 24 Apr 08
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a leading web analysis site
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among Americans under the age of 35, social networking and user-generated content sites have overtaken TV as a primary media.
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“Visitors to MySpace.com and Friendster.com generally skew older, with people age 25 and older comprising 68 and 71 percent of their user bases, respectively.”
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We’re in the midst of a paradigm shift where individuals are indeed connecting “in ways and at levels that [they] haven’t done before”
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Ernst & Young, for instance, has a significant presence on Facebook in support of its recruiting efforts
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Google, Home Depot, Enterprise Rent a Car, and Deloitte also are recruiting using Web 2.0 tools through YouTube videos and even alumni social networks
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“If companies keep social networks out, they will be doing a significant disservice to their bottom lines
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The only content service with mass adoption (greater than 50 percent) was Social Networking, and this was only among respondents under the age of 35.”
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In addition, Millennials are the first generation to spend more hours online per week than watching TV (16.7 vs 13.6).
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some of the characteristics of Millenials, which included a desire to work in “[open] and flat organizations” as “part of a tribe.”
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“heavy use of technology (messaging, collaboration, online learning) as a daily part of their work lives.”
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A retiring Boomer who is an expert in a particular field could be an excellent community manager, blogger, or wiki contributor.
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Business people and management should read this article about the transformation of business by using workplace communities. "Workplace communities are designed to solve workplace-related challenges" -- they focus on tasks. I would find it interesting to see a business REALLY use technology to change things. Having the business in a business network (OK a NING) and let people tag their posts with the business related PROBLEMS they are having and blog, video, or photograph it-- the tag cloud would tell the business IMMEDIATELY what the problems are in the company. The problem with this model is that there are few corporate executives who REALLY want to know the problems within their organizations. They don't want to be problem solvers, just opportunity creators. However, when managers open their eyes (and I'm a former General Manager myself) and see that two things give business opportunity: problem solving and innovation. And they are directly related. True innovation solves problems. Read this article and think about how you may solve problems using the networks you may now create. If you don't want everyone to know, keep it private and only allow people in your company in.
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Fair use and transformativeness: It may shake your world - NeverEndingSearch - Blog on ... - 0 views
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I learned on Friday night that the critical test for fairness in terms of educational use of media is transformative use. When a user of copyrighted materials adds value to, or repurposes materials for a use different from that for which it was originally intended, it will likely be considered transformative use; it will also likely be considered fair use. Fair use embraces the modifying of existing media content, placing it in new context.
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According to Jaszi, Copyright law is friendlier to good teaching than many teachers now realize. Fair use is like a muscle that needs to be exercised. People can't exercise it in a climate of fear and uncertainty.
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Fair use is a doctrine within copyright law that allows use of copyrighted material for educational purposes without permission from the the owners or creators. It is designed to balance rights of users with the rights of owners by encouraging widespread and flexible use of cultural products for the purposes of education and the advancement of knowledge.
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My new understanding: I learned on Friday night that the critical test for fairness in terms of educational use of media is transformative use. When a user of copyrighted materials adds value to, or repurposes materials for a use different from that for which it was originally intended, it will likely be considered transformative use; it will also likely be considered fair use. Fair use embraces the modifying of existing media content, placing it in new context. Examples of transformativeness might include: using campaign video in a lesson exploring media strategies or rhetoric, using music videos to explore such themes as urban violence, using commercial advertisements to explore messages relating to body image or the various different ways beer makers sell beer, remixing a popular song to create a new artistic expression.
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Long ago, I learned that educational use of media had to pass four tests to be appropriate and fair according to U.S. Code Title 17 107: the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is commercial or nonprofit the nature of the use the amount of the use the effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work.
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--A Conversation about Media Literacy, Copyright and Fair Use--stirred up more cognitive disonance than I've experienced in years
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the discussion was one of several to be held around the country designed to clear up widespread confusion and to: develop a shared understanding of how copyright and fair use applies to the creative media work that our students create and our own use of copyrighted materials as educators, practitioners, advocates and curriculum developers.
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Jaszi points to Bill Graham Archives vs.Dorling Kindersley (2006) as a clear example of how courts liberally interpret fair use even with a commercial publisher.
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Here's what I think I learned on Friday about fair use: The Multimedia Fair Use Guidelines describe minimum rules for fair use, but were never intended as specific rules or designed to exhaust the universe of educational practice. They were meant as a dynamic, rather than static doctrine, supposed to expand with time, technology, changes in practice. Arbitrary rules regarding proportion or time periods of use (for instance, 30-second or 45-day rules) have no legal status. The fact that permission has been sought but not granted is irrelevant. Permission is not necessary to satisfy fair use. Fair use is fair use without regard to program or platform. What is fair, because it is transformative, is fair regardless of place of use. If a student has repurposed and added value to copyrighted material, she should be able to use it beyond the classroom (on YouTube, for instance) as well as within it. Not every student use of media is fair, but many uses are. One use not likely to be fair, is the use of a music soundtrack merely as an aesthetic addition to a student video project. Students need to somehow recreate to add value. Is the music used simply a nice aesthetic addition or does the new use give the piece different meaning? Are students adding value, engaging the music, reflecting, somehow commenting on.the music? Not everything that is rationalized as educationally beneficial is necessarily fair use. For instance, photocopying a text book because it is not affordable is still not fair use.
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Copyright law is friendlier to good teaching than many teachers now realize. Fair use is like a muscle that needs to be exercised. People can't exercise it in a climate of fear and uncertainty
Ed tech vs. larger class sizes: Worth the trade-off? | Featured on eSchool News | eScho... - 9 views
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Flashboard Wars: The Age vs The Herald-Sun - 3 views
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apophenia: Some thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook Status Updates - 10 views
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Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Blogging is Like Football! (What blogging is) - 5 views
coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/...ing-is-like-football-what.html
blogging football education edublogger
shared by Vicki Davis on 02 Dec 09
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This is an older post but really resonates with me. (Isn't it funny how you can read something from a while back and re-learn all over again some really cool things.) I had to laugh and remember - this was during my first year of blogging and everything is STILL TRUE about blogging. Gotta love this amazing blogging thing that lets us re-invent and re-learn about ourselves over time.
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Since this post is already creating a stir, I'm bookmarking it to track it. This is my ponderings from the Georgia Tech Football Game vs. Miami about how blogging is like football.
Galapagos Islands vs. EcoTourism - 4 views
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iPad2 Comparison Video (Panasonic P2) - Bellingrath Gardens, Mobile, AL vs. iPad2 Compa... - 0 views
youtubedoubler.com/?video1=dWKx4puhHbk&start1=0&video2=J7moXOD06iU&start2=0&authorName=
video comparison youtube YouTube Doubler
shared by Michael Walker on 30 Mar 11
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